Housing minister calls recent housing boom ‘colossal failure’ – Mortgage Strategy
The housing system has been a “big failure”, according to housing minister Matthew Pennycook in his speech supporting the government’s reform plans.
Pennycook talked a lot about the government’s promises to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament.
Speaking to the UK Real Estate and Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF), housing minister Matthew Pennycook said: “The case for fundamentally changing the housing system we inherited is undeniable.
“By any metric, it was a colossal failure.
“As I have argued many times, in many different parts of the country: the problem of housing availability, affordability and quality produced by that system is damaging people’s lives and hindering economic growth and productivity.
“That is why, as a government, we have set ourselves the task of fixing this failing system and branch.”
Pennycook went on to explain the government’s plans to change planning regulations, provide more money, and speed up development to build more homes.
The government wants to bring in more investment, and deliver 1.5 million new homes.
Pennycook said the changes are the biggest update to the housing and planning system in decades.
He also saw that the industry is facing difficult economic conditions and said that the government and developers must continue to work together to solve problems, build more homes, and support economic growth.
Pennycook added: “While much has been done, it is clear that there is still more to do as we strive to reach our ambitious target of 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament.
“We need to complete a range of legislative and policy measures. We need to publish the final, revised NPPF, and we will do so this summer. We need to implement our National Scheme of Delegation, and we will put in place the necessary regulations in the coming weeks.”
Hampshire Trust Bank managing director of finance Neil Leitch said:
“There is no doubt that many of the areas being discussed reflect things that the industry has been promoting for a long time and more focus on planning capacity, SME developers and housing delivery is welcome. The big issue for me, however, is whether any of it starts to change what people actually see on the ground because that is ultimately what matters.
“If we go back and look at the housing delivery itself, I think there is still a fair question about where reasonable growth is seen. The desire to build 1.5 million homes is significant compared to recent levels of housing delivery, but the broad requirement itself is not new. We have known for over two decades that about 300,000 homes a year were needed and yet here we are still needing to grow more than the population today.
“That should worry all of us because during that time we have seen changes, interventions and policy plans come and go, yet many of the existing obstacles remain in one place.
“When I sit with developers, the conversation rarely starts with housing targets or policy announcements. It starts with sites, schemes and the practical reality of trying to move projects through the system, many, who feel unexpected and sometimes broken. I hear stories regularly about applications that take a significant amount of time to register, planning officials change during the process and different definitions may be used in the applications themselves or not changed despite the planning policy not changed.”
